Abstract
When confronted with a problem, have you ever stopped and asked “why” five times? The Five Whys technique is a simple but powerful way to troubleshoot problems by exploring cause-and-effect relationships.
You have full access to this open access chapter, Download chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
In a Word When confronted with a problem, have you ever stopped and asked “why” five times? The Five Whys technique is a simple but powerful way to troubleshoot problems by exploring cause-and-effect relationships.
Rationale
For every effect there is a cause. But the results chain between the two is fairly long and becomes finer as one moves from inputs to activities, outputs, outcome, and impact.Footnote 1 In results-based management ,Footnote 2 the degree of control one enjoys decreases higher up the chain and the challenge of monitoring and evaluating correspondingly increases.
In due course, when a problem appears, the temptation is strong to blame others or external events. Yet, the root cause of problems often lies closer to home.
For Want of a Nail
For want of a nail the shoe is lost;
For want of a shoe the horse is lost;
For want of a horse the rider is lost;
For want of a rider the battle is lost;
For want of a battle the kingdom is lost;
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
—George Herbert
The Five Whys Technique
When looking to solve a problem, it helps to begin at the end result, reflect on what caused that, and question the answer five times.Footnote 3 This elementary and often effective approach to problem solving promotes deep thinking through questioning, and can be adapted quickly and applied to most problems.Footnote 4 Most obviously and directly, the Five Whys technique relates to the principle of systematic problem-solving: without the intent of the principle, the technique can only be a shell of the process. Hence, there are three key elements to effective use of the Five Whys technique: (i) accurate and complete statements of problems,Footnote 5 (ii) complete honesty in answering the questions, (iii) the determination to get to the bottom of problems and resolve them. The technique was developed by Sakichi Toyoda for the Toyota Industries Corporation.
Process
The Five-Whys exercise is vastly improved when applied by a team and there are five basic steps to conducting it:
-
Gather a team and develop the problem statement in agreement. After this is done, decide whether or not additional individuals are needed to resolve the problem.
-
Ask the first “why” of the team: why is this or that problem taking place? There will probably be three or four sensible answers: record them all on a flip chart or whiteboard, or use index cards taped to a wall.
-
Ask four more successive “whys,” repeating the process for every statement on the flip chart, whiteboard, or index cards. Post each answer near its “parent”. Follow up on all plausible answers. You will have identified the root cause when asking “why” yields no further useful information. (If necessary, continue to ask questions beyond the arbitrary five layers to get to the root cause.)
-
Among the dozen or so answers to the last asked “why” look for systemic causes of the problem. Discuss these and settle on the most likely systemic cause. Follow the team session with a debriefing and show the product to others to confirm that they see logic in the analysis.
-
After settling on the most probable root cause of the problem and obtaining confirmation of the logic behind the analysis, develop appropriate corrective actions to remove the root cause from the system. The actions can (as the case demands) be undertaken by others but planning and implementation will benefit from team inputs.
Caveat
The Five Whys technique has been criticized as too basic a tool to analyze root causes to the depth required to ensure that the causes are fixed. The reasons for this criticism include:
-
The tendency of investigators to stop at symptoms, and not proceed to lower level root causes.
-
The inability of investigators to cast their minds beyond current information and knowledge.
-
Lack of facilitation and support to help investigators ask the right questions.
-
The low repeat rate of results: different teams using the Five Whys technique have been known to come up with different causes for the same problem.
Clearly, the Five Whys technique will suffer if it is applied through deduction only. The process articulated earlier encourages on-the-spot verification of answers to the current “why” question before proceeding to the next, and should help avoid such issues.
Notes
- 1.
Inputs, activities, and outputs are within the direct control of an intervention's management. An outcome is what an intervention can be expected to achieve and be accountable for. An impact is what an intervention is expected to contribute to.
- 2.
Results-based management is a life-cycle management philosophy and approach that emphasizes results in integrated planning, implementing, monitoring, reporting, learning, and changing. Demonstrating results is important for credibility, accountability, and continuous learning, and to inform decision-making and resource allocation.
- 3.
Five is a good rule of thumb. By asking “why” five times, one can usually peel away the layers of symptoms that hide the cause of a problem. But one may also find one needs to ask “why” fewer times, or conversely more.
- 4.
Root cause analysis is the generic name of problem-solving techniques. The basic elements of root causes are materials, equipment, the man-made or natural environment, information, measurement, methods and procedures, people, management, and management systems. Other tools can be used if the Five Whys technique does not intuitively direct attention to one of these. They include barrier analysis, change analysis, causal factor tree analysis, and the Ishikawa (or fishbone) diagram.
- 5.
By repeating “why” five times, the nature of the problem as well as its solution becomes clear.
Further Reading
ADB (2007) Guidelines for preparing a design and monitoring framework. Manila
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
The opinions expressed in this chapter are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Asian Development Bank, its Board of Directors, or the countries they represent.
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 IGO license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/igo/) which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the Asian Development Bank, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
Any dispute related to the use of the works of the Asian Development Bank that cannot be settled amicably shall be submitted to arbitration pursuant to the UNCITRAL rules. The use of the Asian Development Bank’s name for any purpose other than for attribution, and the use of the Asian Development Bank’s logo, shall be subject to a separate written license agreement between the Asian Development Bank and the user and is not authorized as part of this CC-IGO license. Note that the link provided above includes additional terms and conditions of the license.
The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
Copyright information
© 2017 Asian Development Bank
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Serrat, O. (2017). The Five Whys Technique. In: Knowledge Solutions. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0983-9_32
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0983-9_32
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-10-0982-2
Online ISBN: 978-981-10-0983-9
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)